Straight to Hell by John LeFevre | Summary: Summary and Analysis of John LeFevre's "Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals"

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Lying: Deal with it straight up (Lorimer Deal With It)

comparing 1776 with 1861, it was once more the Tories, the aristocrats,the Lord Norths, who hoped for our overthrow, while the people ofEngland, with certain liberal leaders in Parliament, stood our friends.Just as Pitt and Burke had spoken for us in our Revolution, so Bright andCobden befriended us now. The parallel ceases when you come to theSovereign. Queen Victoria declined to support or recognize Slave Land.She stopped the Government and aristocratic England from forcing war uponus, she prevented the French Emperor, Napoleon III, from recognizing theSouthern Confederacy. We shall come to this in its turn. Our Civil Warset up in England a huge vibration, subjected England to a searching testof herself. Nothing describes this better than a letter of Henry WardBeecher's, written during the War, after his return from addressing thepeople of England.

"My own feelings and judgment underwent a great change while I was inEngland... I was chilled and shocked at the coldness towards the Northwhich I everywhere met, and the sympathetic prejudices in favor of theSouth. And yet everybody was alike condemning slavery and praisingliberty!"

How could England do this, how with the same breath blow cold and hot,how be against the North that was fighting the extension of slavery andyet be against slavery too? Confusing at the time, it is clear to-day.Imbedded in Lincoln's first inaugural address lies the clew: he said, "Ihave no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with theinstitution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful rightto do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who elected me did sowith full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations,and had never recanted them." Thus Lincoln, March 4, 1861. Six weekslater, when we went-to war, we went, not "to interfere with theinstitution of slavery," but (again in Lincoln's words) "to preserve,protect, and defend" the Union. This was our slogan, this our fight,this was repeated again and again by our soldiers and civilians, by ourpublic men and our private citizens. Can you see the position of thoseEnglishmen who condemned slavery and praised liberty? We ourselves saidwe were not out to abolish slavery, we disclaimed any such object, by ourown words we cut the ground away from them.

Not until September 22d of 1862, to take effect upon January 1, 1863, didLincoln proclaim emancipation--thus doing what he had said twenty-twomonths before "I believe I have no lawful right to do."

That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly hehad felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation ofthe Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped togetheras to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had he known thisfrom the start, known that the North's bottom cause, the ending ofslavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral ground outweighs and mustforever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be on the other side, hecould have done nothing. "I believe I have no lawful right." There werethousands in the North who also thus believed. It was only an extremistminority who disregarded the Constitution's acquiescence in slavery andwanted emancipation proclaimed at once. Had Lincoln proclaimed it, theNorth would have split in pieces, the South would have won, the Unionwould have perished, and slavery would have remained. Lincoln had to waituntil the season of anguish and meditation had unblinded thousandsbesides himself, and thus had placed behind him enough of the North tostruggle on to that saving of the Union and that freeing of the slavewhich was consummated more than two years later by Lee's surrender toGrant at Appomattox.

But it was during that interim of anguish and meditation that England didus most of the harm which our memories vaguely but violently treasure.Until the Emancipation, we gave our English friends no public, officialgrounds for their sympathy, and consequently their influence over ourEnglish enemies was hampered. Instantly after January 1, 1863, thatsympathy became the deciding voice. Our enemies could no longer say toit, "but Lincoln says himself that he doesn't intend to abolish slavery."

Here are examples of what occurred: To William Lloyd Garrison, theAbolitionist, an English sympathizer wrote that three thousand men ofManchester had met there and adopted by acclamation an enthusiasticmessage to Lincoln. These men said that they would rather remain unem-ployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at the expense ofthe slave. A month later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner: "I know nothingin my political experience so striking, an a display of spontaneouspublic action, as that of the vast gathering at Exeter Hall (in London),when, without one attraction in the form of a popular orator, the vastbuilding, its minor rooms and passages, and the streets adjoining, werecrowded with an enthusiastic audience. That meeting has had a powerfuleffect on our newspapers and politicians. It has closed the mouths ofthose who have been advocating the side of the South. And I now write toassure you that any unfriendly act on the part of our Government--nomatter which of our aristocratic parties is in power--towards your causeis not to be apprehended. If an attempt were made by the Government inany way to commit us to the South, a spirit would be instantly arousedwhich would drive that Government from power."

I lay emphasis at this point upon these instances (many more could begiven) because it has been the habit of most Americans to say thatEngland stopped being hostile to the North as soon as the North began towin. In January, 1863, the North had not visibly begun to win. It hadsuffered almost unvaried defeat so far; and the battles of Gettysburg andVicksburg, where the tide turned at last our way, were still six monthsahead. It was from January 1, 1863, when Lincoln planted our cause firmlyand openly on abolition ground, that the undercurrent of British sympathysurged to the top. The true wonder is, that this undercurrent should havebeen so strong all along, that those English sympathizers somehow intheir hearts should have known what we were fighting for more clearlythan we had been able to see it; ourselves. The key to this is given inBeecher's letter--it is nowhere better given--and to it I must nowreturn.

"I soon perceived that my first error was in supposing that Great Britainwas an impartial spectator. In fact, she was morally an actor in theconflict. Such were the antagonistic influences at work in her own midst,and the division of parties, that, in judging American affairs she couldnot help lending sanction to one or the other side of her own internalconflicts. England was not, then, a judge, sitting calmly on the bench todecide without bias; the case brought before her was her own, inprinciple, and in interest. In taking sides with the North, the commonpeople of Great Britain and the laboring class took sides with themselvesin their struggle for reformation; while the wealthy and the privilegedclasses found a reason in their own political parties and philosophieswhy they should not be too eager for the legitimate government and nationof the United States.

"All classes who, at home, were seeking the elevation and politicalenfranchisement of the common people, were with us. All who studied thepreservation of the state in its present unequal distribution ofpolitical privileges, sided with that section in America that were doingthe same thing.

"We ought not to be surprised nor angry that men should maintainaristocratic doctrines which they believe in fully as sincerely, and moreconsistently, than we, or many amongst us do, in democratic doctrines.

"We of all people ought to understand how a government can be cold orsemi-hostile, while the people are friendly with us. For thirty years theAmerican Government, in the hands, or under the influence of Southernstatesmen, has been in a threatening attitude to Europe, and actually indisgraceful conflict with all the weak neighboring Powers. Texas, Mexico,Central Generics, and Cuba are witnesses. Yet the great body of our peoplein the Middle and Northern States are strongly opposed to all suchtendencies."

It was in a very brief visit that Beecher managed to see England as shewas: a remarkable letter for its insight, and more remarkable still forits moderation, when you consider that it was written in the midst of ourCivil War, while loyal Americans were not only enraged with England, butwounded to the quick as well. When a man can do this--can have passionateconvictions in passionate times, and yet keep his judgment unclouded,wise, and calm, he serves his country well.

I can remember the rage and the wound. In that atmosphere I began myexistence. My childhood was steeped in it. In our house the London Punchwas stopped, because of its hostile ridicule. I grew to boyhood hearingfrom my elders how England had for years taunted us with our tolerance ofslavery while we boasted of being the Land of the Free--and then, when wearose to abolish slavery, how she "jack-knived" and gave aid and comfortto the slave power when it had its fingers upon our throat. Many of thatgeneration of my elders never wholly got over the rage and the wound.They hated all England for the sake of less than half England. Theycounted their enemies but never their friends. There's nothing unnaturalabout this, nothing rare. On the contrary, it's the usual, natural,unjust thing that human nature does in times of agony. It's the HenryWard Beechers that are rare. In times of agony the average man and womansee nothing but their agony. When I look over some of the letters that Ireceived from England in 1915--letters from strangers evoked by a bookcalled The Pentecost of Calamity, wherein I had published my convictionthat the cause of England was righteous, the cause of Germany hideous,and our own persistent neutrality unworthy--I'm glad I lost my temperonly once, and replied caustically only once. How dreadful (wrote one ofmy correspondents) must it be to belong to a nation that was behavinglike mine! I retorted (I'm sorry for it now) that I could all the morereadily comprehend English feeling about our neutrality, because I hadknown what we had felt when Gladstone spoke at Newcastle and when Englandlet the Alabama loose upon us in 1862. Where was the good in replying atall? Silence is almost always the best reply in these cases. Next came aletter from another English stranger, in which the writer announcedhaving just read The Pentecost of Calamity. Not a word of friendlinessfor what I had said about the righteousness of England's cause or myexpressed unhappiness over the course which our Government had taken--nothing but scorn for us all and the hope that we should reap our desertswhen Germany defeated England and invaded us. Well? What of it? Here wasa stricken person, writing in stress, in a land of desolation, mourningfor the dead already, waiting for the next who should die, a poor,unstrung average person, who had not long before read that remark of ourPresident's made on the morrow of the Lusitania: that there is such athing as being too proud to fight; had read during the ensuing weeksthose notes wherein we stood committed by our Chief Magistrate to averbal slinking away and sitting down under it. Can you wonder? If themere memory of those days of our humiliation stabs me even now, I need noone to tell me (though I have been told) what England, what France, feltabout us then, what it must have been like for Americans who were inEngland and France at that time. No: the average person in great troublecannot rise above the trouble and survey the truth and be just. InEnglish eyes our Government--and therefore all of us--failed in 1914--1915--1916--failed again and again--insulted the cause of humanity whenwe said through our President in 1916, the third summer of the war, thatwe were not concerned with either the causes or the aims of thatconflict. How could they remember Hoover, or Robert Bacon, or LeonardWood, or Theodore Roosevelt then, any more than we could remember JohnBright, or Richard Cobden, or the Manchester men in the days when theAlabama was sinking the merchant vessels of the Union?

We remembered Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in the BritishGovernment, and their fellow aristocrats in British society; weremembered the aristocratic British press--The Times notably, because themost powerful--these are what we saw, felt, and remembered, because theywere not with us, and were able to hurt us in the days when our friendswere not yet able to help us. They made welcome the Southerners who cameover in the interests of the South, they listened to the Southernpropaganda. Why? Because the South was the American version of theiraristocratic creed. To those who came over in the interests of the Northand of the Union they turned a cold shoulder, because they representedDemocracy; moreover, a Dis-United States would prove in commerce a lessformidable competitor. To Captain Bullock, the able and energeticSoutherner who put through in England the building and launching of thoseConfederate cruisers which sank our ships and destroyed our merchantmarine, and to Mason and Slidell, the doors of dukes opened pleasantly;Beecher and our other emissaries mostly had to dine beneath uncoronetedroofs.

In the pages of Henry Adams, and of Charles Francis Adams his brother,you can read of what they, as young men, encountered in London, and whatthey saw their father have to put up with there, both from Englishsociety and the English Government. Their father was our new minister toEngland, appointed by Lincoln. He arrived just after our Civil War hadbegun. I have heard his sons talk about it familiarly, and it is all tobe found in their writings.

Nobody knows how to be disagreeable quite so well as the Englishgentleman, except the English lady. They can do it with the nicety of amedicine dropper. They can administer the precise quantum suff. in everycase. In the society of English gentlemen and ladies Mr. Adams by hisofficial position was obliged to move. They left him out as much as theycould, but, being the American Minister, he couldn't be left outaltogether. At their dinners and functions he had to hear openexpressions of joy at the news of Southern victories, he had to receiveslights both veiled and unveiled, and all this he had to bear withequanimity. Sometimes he did leave the room; but with dignity anddiscretion. A false step, a "break," might have led to a request forhis recall. He knew that his constant presence, close to the EnglishGovernment, was vital to our cause. Russell and Palmerston were by turnsinsolent and shifty, and once on the very brink of recognizing theSouthern Confederacy as an independent nation. Gladstone, Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, in a speech at Newcastle, virtually did recognize it. Youwill be proud of Mr. Adams if you read how he bore himself and fulfilledhis appallingly delicate and difficult mission. He was an American whoknew how to behave himself, and he behaved himself all the time; whilethe English had a way of turning their behavior on and off, like the hotwater. Mr. Adams was no admirer of "shirt-sleeves" diplomacy. Hisdiplomacy wore a coat. Our experiments in "shirt-sleeves" diplomacyfail to show that it accomplishes anything which diplomacy decentlydressed would not accomplish more satisfactorily. Upon Mr. Adams fellsome consequences of previous American crudities, of which I shall speaklater.

Lincoln had declared a blockade on Southern ports before Mr. Adamsarrived in London. Upon his arrival he found England had proclaimed herneutrality and recognized the belligerency of the South. This dismayedMr. Adams and excited the whole North, because feeling ran too high toperceive this first act on England's part to be really favorable to us;she could not recognize our blockade, which stopped her getting Southerncotton, unless she recognized that the South was in a state of war withus. Looked at quietly, this act of England's helped us and hurt herself,for it deprived her of cotton.

It was not with this, but with the reception and treatment of Mr. Adamsthat the true hostility began. Slights to him were slaps at us, sympathywith the South was an active moral injury to our cause, even if it wasmostly an undertone, politically. Then all of a sudden, something that wedid ourselves changed the undertone to a loud overtone, and we justgrazed England's declaring war on us. Had she done so, then indeed it hadbeen all up with us. This incident is the comic going-back on our owndoctrine of 1812, to which I have alluded above.

On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the American steam sloopSan Jacinto, fired a shot across the bow of the British vessel Trent,stopped her on the high seas, and took four passengers off her, andbrought them prisoners to Fort Warren, in Boston harbor. Mason andSlidell are the two we remember, Confederate envoys to France and GreatBritain. Over this the whole North burst into glorious joy. Our Secretaryof the Navy wrote to Wilkes his congratulations, Congress voted itsthanks to him, governors and judges laureled him with oratory atbanquets, he was feasted with meat and drink all over the place, and,though his years were sixty-three, ardent females probably rushed forthfrom throngs and kissed him with the purest intentions: heroes have noage. But presently the Trent arrived in England, and the British lion wasaroused. We had violated international law, and insulted the Britishflag. Palmerston wrote us a letter--or Russell, I forget which wrote it--a letter that would have left us no choice but to fight. But QueenVictoria had to sign it before it went. "My lord," she said, "you mustknow that I will agree to no paper that means war with the UnitedStates." So this didn't go, but another in its stead, pretty stiff,naturally, yet still possible for us to swallow. Some didn't want toswallow even this; but Lincoln, humorous and wise, said, "Gentlemen, onewar at a time;" and so we made due restitution, and Messrs. Mason andSlidell went their way to France and England, free to bring about actionagainst us there if they could manage it. Captain Wilkes must have been agood fellow. His picture suggests this. England, in her English heart,really liked what he had done, it was in its gallant flagrancy soremarkably like her own doings--though she couldn't, naturally, permitsuch a performance to pass; and a few years afterwards, for his servicesin the cause of exploration, her Royal Geographical Society gave him agold medal! Yes; the whole thing is comic--to-day; for us, to-day, thepoint of it is, that the English Queen saved us from a war with England.

Within a year, something happened that was not comic. Lord John Russell,though warned and warned, let the Alabama slip away to sea, where sheproceeded to send our merchant ships to the bottom, until the Kearsargesent her herself to the bottom. She had been built at Liverpool in theface of an English law which no quibbling could disguise to anybodyexcept to Lord John Russell and to those who, like him, leaned to theSouth. Ten years later, this leaning cost England fifteen million dollarsin damages.

Let us now listen to what our British friends were saying in those yearsbefore Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. His blockade hadbrought immediate and heavy distress upon many English workmen and theirfamilies. That had been April 19, 1861. By September, five sixths of theLancashire cotton-spinners were out of work, or working half time. Theirstarvation and that of their wives and children could be stemmed bycharity alone. I have talked with people who saw those thousands in theirsuffering. Yet those thousands bore it. They somehow looked throughLincoln's express disavowal of any intention to interfere with slavery,and saw that at bottom our war was indeed against slavery, that slaverywas behind the Southern camouflage about independence, and behind theNorthern slogan about preserving the Union. They saw and they stuck."Rarely," writes Charles Francis Adams, "in the history of mankind, hasthere been a more creditable exhibition of human sympathy." France waslikewise damaged by our blockade; and Napoleon III would have liked torecognize the South. He established, through Maximilian, an empire inMexico, behind which lay hostility to our Democracy. He wished us defeat;but he was afraid to move without England, to whom he made a successionof indirect approaches. These nearly came to something towards the closeof 1862. It was on October 7th that Gladstone spoke at Newcastle aboutJefferson Davis having made a nation. Yet, after all, England didn'tbudge, and thus held Napoleon back. From France in the end the South gotneither ships nor recognition, in spite of his deceitful connivance anddesire; Napoleon flirted a while with Slidell, but grew cold when he sawno chance of English cooperation.

Besides John Bright and Cobden, we had other English friends of influenceand celebrity: John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hughes, Goldwin Smith, LeslieStephen, Robert Gladstone, Frederic Harrison are some of them. All fromthe first supported us. All from the first worked and spoke for us. TheUnion and Emancipation Society was founded. "Your Committee," says itsfinal report when the war was ended, "have issued and circulated upwardsof four hundred thousand books, pamphlets, and tracts... and nearly fivehundred official and public meetings have been held..." The president ofthis Society, Mr. Potter, spent thirty thousand dollars in the cause, andat a time when times were hard and fortunes as well as cotton-spinners indistress through our blockade. Another member of the Society, Mr.Thompson, writes of one of the public meetings: "... I addressed acrowded assembly of unemployed operatives in the town of Heywood, nearManchester, and spoke to them for two hours about the Slaveholders'Rebellion. They were united and vociferous in the expression of theirwillingness to suffer all hardships consequent upon a want of cotton, ifthereby the liberty of the victims of Southern despotism might bepromoted. All honor to the half million of our working population inLancashire, Cheshire, and elsewhere, who are bearing with heroicfortitude the privation which your war has entailed upon them!... Theirsublime resignation, their self-forgetfulness, their observance of law,their whole-souled love of the cause of human freedom, their quick andclear perception of the merits of the question between the North and theSouth... are extorting the admiration of all classes of the community..."

How much of all this do you ever hear from the people who remember theAlabama?

Strictly in accord with Beecher's vivid summary of the true England inour Civil War, are some passages of a letter from Mr. John Bigelow, whowas at that time our Consul-General at Paris, and whose impressions,written to our Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, on February 6, 1863, areinteresting to compare with what Beecher says in that letter, from whichI have already given extracts.

"The anti-slavery meetings in England are having their effect upon theGovernment already... The Paris correspondent of the London Post alsocame to my house on Wednesday evening... He says... that there areabout a dozen persons who by their position and influence over the organsof public opinion have produced all the bad feeling and treacherous con-duct of England towards America. They are people who, as members ofthe Government in times past, have been bullied by the U. S.... They arenot entirely ignorant that the class who are now trying to overthrow theGovernment were mainly responsible for the brutality, but they think weas a nation are disposed to bully, and they are disposed to assist in anypolicy that may dismember and weaken us. These scars of wounded pride,however, have been carefully concealed from the public, who thereforecannot be readily made to see why, when the President has distinctly madethe issue between slave labor and free labor, that England should not gowith the North. He says these dozen people who rule England hate uscordially... "

There were more than a dozen, a good many more, as we know from Charlesand Henry Adams. But read once again the last paragraph of Beecher'sletter, and note how it corresponds with what Mr. Bigelow says about thefeeling which our Government (for thirty years "in the hands or under theinfluence of Southern statesmen") had raised against us by its badmanners to European governments. This was the harvest sown by shirtsleeves diplomacy and reaped by Mr. Adams in 1861. Only seven yearsbefore, we had gratuitously offended four countries at once. Three of ourforeign ministers (two of them from the South) had met at Ostend andlater at Aix in the interests of extending slavery, and there, in a jointmanifesto, had ordered Spain to sell us Cuba, or we would take Cuba byforce. One of the three was our minister to Spain. Spain had received himcourteously as the representative of a nation with whom she was at peace.It was like ringing the doorbell of an acquaintance, being shown into theparlor and telling him he must sell you his spoons or you would snatchthem. This doesn't incline your neighbor to like you. But, as has beensaid, Mr. Adams was an American who did know how to behave, and therebyserved us well in our hour of need.

We remember the Alabama and our English enemies, we forget Bright, andCobden, and all our English friends; but Lincoln did not forget them.When a young man, a friend of Bright's, an Englishman, had been caughthere in a plot to seize a vessel and make her into another Alabama, JohnBright asked mercy for him; and here are Lincoln's words in consequence:"whereas one Rubery was convicted on or about the twelfth day of October,1863, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District ofCalifornia, of engaging in, and giving aid and comfort to the existingrebellion against the Government of this Country, and sentenced to tenyears' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of ten thousand dollars;

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is of the immature age of twentyyears, and of highly respectable parentage;

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is a subject of Great Britain, andhis pardon is desired by John Bright, of England;

"Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of theUnited States of America, these and divers other considerations methereunto moving, and especially as a public mark of the esteem held bythe United States of America for the high character and steady friendshipof the said John Bright, do hereby grant a pardon to the said AlfredRubery, the same to begin and take effect on the twentieth day of January1864, on condition that he leave the country within thirty days from andafter that date."

Thus Lincoln, because of Bright; and because of a word from Bright toCharles Sumner about the starving cotton-spinners, Americans sent fromNew York three ships with flour for those faithful English friends ofours.

And then, at Geneva in 1872, England paid us for what the Alabama haddone. This Court of Arbitration grew slowly; suggested first by Mr.Thomas Batch to Lincoln, who thought the millennium wasn't quite at handbut favored "airing the idea." The idea was not aired easily. Cobdenwould have brought it up in Parliament, but illness and death overtookhim. The idea found but few other friends. At last Horace Greeley "aired"it in his paper. On October 23, 1863, Mr. Adams said to Lord JohnRussell, "I am directed to say that there is no fair and equitable formof conventional arbitrament or reference to which the United States willnot be willing to submit." This, some two years later, Russell recalled,saying in reply to a statement of our grievances by Adams: "It appears toHer Majesty's Government that there are but two questions by which theclaim of compensation could be tested; the one is, Have the BritishGovernment acted with due diligence, or, in other words, in good faithand honesty, in the maintenance of the neutrality they proclaimed? Theother is, Have the law officers of the Crown properly understood theforeign enlistment act, when they declined, in June 1862, to advise thedetention and seizure of the Alabama, and on other occasions when theywere asked to detain other ships, building or fitting in British ports?It appears to Her Majesty's Government that neither of these questionscould be put to a foreign government with any regard to the dignity andcharacter of the British Crown and the British Nation. Her Majesty'sGovernment are the sole guardians of their own honor. They cannot admitthat they have acted with bad faith in maintaining the neutrality theyprofessed. The law officers of the Crown must be held to be betterinterpreters of a British statute than any foreign Government can bepresumed to be..." He consented to a commission, but drew the line atany probing of England's good faith.

We persisted. In 1868, Lord Westbury, Lord High Chancellor, declared inthe House of Lords that "the animus with which the neutral powers actedwas the only true criterion."

This is the test which we asked should be applied. We quoted Britishremarks about us, Gladstone, for example, as evidence of unfriendly andinsincere animus on the part of those at the head of the BritishGovernment.

Replying to our pressing the point of animus, the British Governmentreasserted Russell's refusal to recognize or entertain any question ofEngland's good faith: "first, because it would be inconsistent with theself-respect which every government is bound to feel...." In Mr. JohnBassett Moore's History of International Arbitration, Vol. I, pages496-497, or in papers relating to the Treaty of Washington, Vol. II,Geneva Arbitration, page 204... Part I, Introductory Statement, you willfind the whole of this. What I give here suffices to show the position weourselves and England took about the Alabama case. She backed down. Hergood faith was put in issue, and she paid our direct claims. She ate"humble pie." We had to eat humble pie in the affair of the Trent. Ithas been done since. It is not pleasant, but it may be beneficial.

Such is the story of the true England and the true America in 1861; thedivided North with which Lincoln had to deal, the divided England whereour many friends could do little to check our influential enemies, untilLincoln came out plainly against slavery. I have had to compress much,but I have omitted nothing material, of which I am aware. The facts wouldembarrass those who determine to assert that England was our undividedenemy during our Civil War, if facts ever embarrassed a complex. Thoseafflicted with the complex can keep their eyes upon the Alabama and theLondon Times, and avert them from Bright, and Cobden, and thecotton-spinners, and the Union and Emancipation Society, and QueenVictoria. But to any reader of this whose complex is not incurable, orwho has none, I will put this question: What opinion of the brains of anyEnglishman would you have if he formed his idea of the United Statesexclusively from the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst.

Chapter XIII: Benefits Forgot

In our next war, our war with Spain in 1898, England saved us fromGermany. She did it from first to last; her position was unmistakable,and every determining act of hers was as our friend. The service that sherendered us in warning Germany to keep out of it, was even greater thanher suggestion of our Monroe doctrine in 1823; for in 1823 she put us onguard against meditated, but remote, assault from Europe, while in 1898she actively averted a serious and imminent peril. As the threat of herfleet had obstructed Napoleon in 1803, and the Holy Alliance in 1823, soin 1898 it blocked the Kaiser. Late in that year, when it was all over,the disappointed and baffled Kaiser wrote to a friend of JosephChamberlain, "If I had had a larger fleet I would have taken Uncle Sam bythe scruff of the neck." Have you ever read what our own fleet was likein those days? Or our Army? Lucky it was for us that we had to deal onlywith Spain. And even the Spanish fleet would have been a much graveropponent in Manila Bay, but for Lord Cromer. On its way from Spainthrough the Suez Canal a formidable part of Spain's navy stopped to coalat Port Said. There is a law about the coaling of belligerent warships inneutral ports. Lord Cromer could have construed that law just as wellagainst us. His construction brought it about that those Spanish shipscouldn't get to Manila Bay in time to take part against Admiral Dewey.The Spanish War revealed that our Navy could hit eight times out of ahundred, and was in other respects unprepared and utterly inadequate tocope with a first-class power. In consequence of this, and the criticismsof our Navy Department, which Admiral Sims as a young man had written,Roosevelt took the steps he did in his first term. Three ticklish timesin that Spanish War England stood our friend against Germany. When itbroke out, German agents approached Mr. Balfour, proposing that Englandjoin in a European combination in Spain's favor. Mr. Balfour's refusal iscommon knowledge, except to the monomaniac with his complex. Next camethe action of Lord Cromer, and finally that moment in Manila Bay whenEngland took her stand by our side and Germany saw she would have tofight us both, if she fought at all.

If you saw any German or French papers at the time of our troubles withSpain, you saw undisguised hostility. If you have talked with anyAmerican who was in Paris during that April of 1898, your impression willbe more vivid still. There was an outburst of European hate for us.Germany, France, and Austria all looked expectantly to England--andEngland disappointed their expectations. The British Press was as muchfor us as the French and German press were hostile; the London Spectatorsaid: "We are not, and we do not pretend to be, an agreeable people, butwhen there is trouble in the family, we know where our hearts are."

In those same days (somewhere about the third week in April, 1898), atthe British Embassy in Washington, occurred a scene of significance andinterest, which has probably been told less often than that interviewbetween Mr. Balfour and the Kaiser's emissary in London. The BritishAmbassador was standing at his window, looking out at the German Embassy,across the street. With him was a member of his diplomatic household. Thetwo watched what was happening. One by one, the representatives ofvarious European nations were entering the door of the German Embassy."Do you see them?" said the Ambassador's companion; "they'll all be inthere soon. There. That's the last of them." "I didn't notice the FrenchAmbassador." "Yes, he's gone in, too." "I'm surprised at that. I'm sorryfor that. I didn't think he would be one of them," said the Britishambassador. "Now, I'll tell you what. They'll all be coming over here ina little while. I want you to wait and be present." Shortly thisprediction was verified. Over from the German Embassy came the wholecompany on a visit to the British Ambassador, that he might add hissignature to a document to which they had affixed theirs. He read itquietly. We may easily imagine its purport, since we know of themeditated European coalition against us at she time of our war withSpain. Then the British Ambassador remarked: "I have no orders from myGovernment to sign any such document as that. And if I did have, I shouldresign my post rather than sign it." A pause: The company fell silent."Then what will your Excellency do?" inquired one visitor. "If you willall do me the honor of coming back to-morrow, I shall have anotherdocument ready which all of us can sign." That is what happened to theEuropean coalition at this end.

Some few years later, that British Ambassador came to die; and to theBritish Embassy repaired Theodore Roosevelt. "Would it be possible for usto arrange," he said, "a funeral more honored and marked than the UnitedStates has ever accorded to any one not a citizen? I should like it.And," he suddenly added, shaking his fist at the German Embassy over theway, "I'd like to grind all their noses in the dirt."

Confronted with the awkward fact that Britain was almost unanimously withus, from Mr. Balfour down through the British press to the Britishpeople, those nations whose ambassadors had paid so unsuccessful a callat the British Embassy had to give it up. Their coalition never cameoff. Such a thing couldn't come off without England, and England said No.

Next, Lord Cromer, at Port Said, stretched out the arm of internationallaw, and laid it upon the Spanish fleet. Belligerents may legally takecoal enough at neutral ports to reach their nearest "home port." ThatSpanish fleet was on its way from Spain to Manila through the Suez Canal.It could have reached there, had Lord Cromer allowed it coal enough tomake the nearest home port ahead of it--Manila. But there was a home portbehind it, still nearer, namely, Barcelona. He let it take coal enough toget back to Barcelona. Thus, England again stepped in.

The third time was in Manila Bay itself, after Dewey's victory, and whilehe was in occupation of the place. Once more the Kaiser tried it, notdiscouraged by his failure with Mr. Balfour and the British Government.He desired the Philippines for himself; we had not yet acquired them; wewere policing them, superintending the harbor, administering whatever hadfallen to us from Spain's defeat. The Kaiser sent, under AdmiralDiedrich, a squadron stronger than Dewey's.

Dewey indicated where the German was to anchor. "I am here by the orderof his Majesty the German Emperor," said Diedrich, and chose his ownplace to anchor. He made it quite plain in other ways that he was takingno orders from America. Dewey, so report has it, at last told him that"if he wanted a fight he could have it at the drop of the hat." Then itwas that the German called on the English Admiral, Chichester, who waslikewise at hand, anchored in Manila Bay. "What would you do," inquiredDiedrich, "in the event of trouble between Admiral Dewey and myself?""That is a secret known only to Admiral Dewey and me," said theEnglishman. Plainer talk could hardly be. Diedrich, though a German,understood it. He returned to his flagship. What he saw next morning wasthe British cruiser in a new place, interposed between Dewey and himself.Once more, he understood; and he and his squadron sailed off; and it wassoon after this incident that the disappointed Kaiser wrote that, if onlyhis fleet had been larger, he would have taken us by the scruff of theneck.

Tell these things to the next man you hear talking about George III orthe Alabama. You may meet him in front of a bulletin board, or in adrawing-room. He is amongst us everywhere, in the street and in thehouse. He may be a paid propagandist or merely a silly ignorant puppet.But whatever he is, he will not find much to say in response, unless itbe vain, sterile chatter. True come-back will fail him as it failed thatman by the bulletin board who asked, "What is England doing, anyhow?" andhis neighbor answered, "Her fleet's keeping the Kaiser out of your frontyard."

Chapter XIV: England the Slacker!

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

Let us have these disregarded facts also. From the shelves of history Ihave pulled down and displayed the facts which our school textbooks havesuppressed; I have told the events wherein England has stood our timelyfriend throughout a century; events which our implanted prejudice leadsus to ignore, or to forget; events which show that any one who saysEngland is our hereditary enemy might just about as well say twice two isfive.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

They go on asking it. The propagandists, the prompted puppets, the paidparrots of the press, go on saying these eight senseless words becausethey are easy to say, since the man who can answer them is generally notthere: to every man who is a responsible master of facts we have--well,how many?--irresponsible shouters in this country. What is yourexperience? How often is it your luck--as it was mine in front of thebulletin board--to see a fraud or a fool promptly and satisfactorily putin his place? Make up your mind that wherever you hear any personwhatsoever, male or female, clean or unclean, dressed in jeans, ordressed in silks and laces, inquire what England "did in the war, anyhow?"such person either shirks knowledge, or else is a fraud or a fool. Tellthem what the man said in the street about the Kaiser and our front yard,but don't stop there. Tell them that in May, 1918, England was sendingmen of fifty and boys of eighteen and a half to the front; that inAugust, 1918, every third male available between those years wasfighting, that eight and a half million men for army and navy were raisedby the British Empire, of which Ireland's share was two and three tenthsper cent, Wales three and seven tenths, Scotland's eight and threetenths, and England's more than sixty per cent; and that this, takenproportionately to our greater population would have amounted to aboutthirteen million Americans, When the war started, the British Empiremaintained three soldiers out of every 2600 of the population; her entirearmy, regular establishment, reserve and territorial forces, amounted toseven hundred thousand men. Our casualties were three hundred andtwenty-two thousand, one hundred and eighty-two. The casualties in theBritish Army were three million, forty-nine thousand, nine hundred andseventy-one--a million more than we sent--and of these six hundred andfifty-eight thousand, seven hundred and four, were killed. Of her Navy,thirty-three thousand three hundred and sixty-one were killed, sixthousand four hundred and five wounded and missing; of her merchantmarine fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one were killed; a totalof forty-eight thousand killed--or ten per cent of all in active service.Some of those of the merchant marine who escaped drowning throughtorpedoes and mines went back to sea after being torpedoed five, six, andseven times.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

Through four frightful years she fought with splendor, she suffered withsplendor, she held on with splendor. The second battle of Ypres is butone drop in the sea of her epic courage; yet it would fill full a cantoof a poem. So spent was Britain's single line, so worn and thin, thatafter all the men available were brought, gaps remained. No moreammunition was coming to these men, the last rounds had been served. Wetthrough, heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days to preventsleep. Many came at last to sleep standing; and being jogged awake whenofficers of the line passed down the trenches, would salute and instantlybe asleep again. On the fourth day, with the Kaiser come to watch themcrumble, three lines of Huns, wave after wave of Germany's picked troops,fell and broke upon this single line of British--and it held. The Kaiser,had he known of the exhausted ammunition and the mounded dead, could havewalked unarmed to the Channel. But he never knew.

Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one with a compound fractureof the thigh had himself propped up, and thus all day worked on thewounded at the front. He knew it meant death for him. The day over, helet them carry him to the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, he died.Thus through four frightful years, the British met their duty and theirdeath.

There is the great story of the little penny steamers of the Thames--astory lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? Who will makethis drop of perfect valor shine in prose or verse for future eyes tosee? Imagine a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country needed her,starting for San Francisco around Cape Horn, and getting there. Some tenor eleven penny steamers under their own steam started from the Thamesdown the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and throughthe submarined Mediterranean for the River Tigris. Boats of shallowdraught were urgently needed on the River Tigris. Four or five reachedtheir destination. Where are the rest?

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

During 1917-1918 Britain's armies held the enemy in three continents andon six fronts, and cooperated with her Allies on two more fronts. Herdead, those six hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead, lay by the Tigris,the Zambesi, the AEgean, and across the world to Flanders' fields. BetweenMarch 21st and April 17th, 1918, the Huns in their drive used 127divisions, and of these 102 were concentrated against the British. Thatwas in Flanders. Britain, at the same time she was fighting in Flanders,had also at various times shared in the fighting in Russia, Kiaochau, NewGuinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Cameroons,Togoland, East Africa, South West Africa, Saloniki, Aden, Persia, andthe northwest frontier of India. Britain cleared twelve hundred thousandsquare miles of the enemy in German colonies. While fighting inMesopotamia, her soldiers were reconstructing at the same time. Theyreclaimed and cultivated more than 1100 square miles of land there, whichproduced in consequence enough food to save two million tons of shippingannually for the Allies. In Palestine and Mesopotamia alone, Britishtroops in 1917 took 23,590 prisoners. In 1918, in Palestine fromSeptember 18th to October 7th, they took 79,000 prisoners.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

With "French's contemptible little army" she saved France at the start--but I'll skip that--except to mention that one division lost 10,000 outof 12,000 men, and 350 out of 400 officers. At Zeebrugge and Ostend--donot forget the Vindictive--she dealt with submarines in April and May,1918--but I'll skip that; I cannot set down all that she did, either atthe start, or nearing the finish, or at any particular moment duringthose four years and three months that she was helping to hold Germanyoff from the throat of the world; it would make a very thick book. But Iam giving you enough, I think, wherewith to answer the ignorant, and thefrauds, and the fools. Tell them that from 1916 to 1918 Great Britainincreased her tillage area by four million acres: wheat 39 per cent,barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50--in spite of the shortage of labor. Sheused wounded soldiers, college boys and girls, boy scouts, refugees, andshe produced the biggest grain crop in fifty years. She started fourteenhundred thousand new war gardens; most of those who worked them hadworked already a long day in a munition factory. These devoted workersincreased the potato crop in 1917 by three million tons--and thusreleased British provision ships to carry our soldiers across. In thatBoston speech which one of my correspondents referred to, our Secretaryof the Navy did not mention this. Mention it yourself. And tell themabout the boy scouts and the women. Fifteen thousand of the boy scoutsjoined the colors, and over fifty thousand of the younger members servedin various ways at home.

Of England's women seven million were engaged in work on munitions andother necessaries and apparatus of war. The terrible test of that secondbattle of Ypres, to which I have made brief allusion above, wrought anindustrial revolution in the manufacture of shells. The energy ofproduction rose at a rate which may be indicated by two or threecomparisons: In 1917 as many heavy howitzer shells were turned out in asingle day as in the whole first year of the war, as many medium shellsin five days, and as many field-gun shells in eight days. Or in otherwords, 45 times as many field-gun shells, 73 times as many medium, and365 times as many heavy howitzer shells, were turned out in 1917 as inthe first year of the war. These shells were manufactured in buildingstotaling fifteen miles in length, forty feet in breadth, with more thanten thousand machine tools driven by seventeen miles of shafting with anenergy of twenty-five thousand horse-power and a weekly output of overten thousand tons' weight of projectiles--all this largely worked by thewomen of England. While the fleet had increased its personnel from136,000 to about 400,000, and 2,000,000 men by July, 1915, hadvoluntarily enlisted in the army before England gave up her birthrightand accepted compulsory service, the women of England left their ordinarylives to fabricate the necessaries of war. They worked at home whiletheir husbands, brothers, and sons fought and died on six battle frontsabroad--six hundred and fifty-eight thousand died, remember; do youremember the number of Americans killed in action?--less than thirty-sixthousand;--those English women worked on, seven millions of them atleast, on milk carts, motor-busses, elevators, steam engines, and inmaking ammunition. Never before had any woman worked on more than 150 ofthe 500 different processes that go to the making of munitions. They nowhandled T. N. T., and fulminate of mercury, more deadly still; helpedbuild guns, gun carriages, and three-and-a-half ton army cannons; workedoverhead traveling cranes for moving the boilers of battleships: turnedlathes, made every part of an aeroplane. And who were these seven millionwomen? The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter of a general wondistinction in advanced munition work. The only daughter of an old Armyfamily broke down after a year's work in a base hospital in France, wasordered six months' rest at home, but after two months entered a munitionfactory as an ordinary employee and after nine months' work had lost butfive minutes working time. The mother of seven enlisted sons went intomunitions not to be behind them in serving England, and one of them wroteher she was probably killing more Germans than any of the family. Thestewardess of a torpedoed passenger ship was among the few survivors.Reaching land, she got a job at a capstan lathe. Those were the sevenmillion women of England--daughters of dukes, torpedoed stewardesses,and everything between.

Seven hundred thousand of these were engaged on munition work proper.They did from 60 to 70 per cent of all the machine work on shells, fuses,and trench warfare supplies, and 1450 of them were trained mechanics tothe Royal Flying Corps. They were employed upon practically everyoperation in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical works, ofwhich they were physically capable; in making of gauges, forging billets,making fuses, cartridges, bullets--"look what they can do," said aforeman, "ladies from homes where they sat about and were waited upon."They also made optical glass; drilled and tapped in the shipyards;renewed electric wires and fittings, wound armatures; lacquered guardsfor lamps and radiator fronts; repaired junction and section boxes, firecontrol instruments, automatic searchlights. "We can hardly believe oureyes," said another foreman, "when we see the heavy stuff brought to andfrom the shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before the war it wasall carted by horses and men. The girls do the job all right, though, andthe only thing they ever complain about is that their toes get cold."They worked without hesitation from twelve to fourteen hours a day, or anight, for seven days a week, and with the voluntary sacrifice of publicholidays.

That is not all, or nearly all, that the women of England did--I skiptheir welfare work, recreation work, nursing--but it is enough wherewithto answer the ignorant, or the fraud, or the fool.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

On August 8, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers. He hadthem within fourteen days. In the first week of September 170,000 menenrolled, 30,000 in a single day. Eleven months later, two million hadenlisted. Ten months later, five million and forty-one thousand hadvoluntarily enrolled in the Army and Navy.

In 1914 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air Service 64 aeroplanes and 800airmen. In 1917 she had many thousand aeroplanes and 42,000 airmen. Inher Royal Flying Corps she had in 1914, 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917,several thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. In the first ninemonths of 1917 British airmen brought down 876 enemy machines and drovedown 759 out of control. From July, 1917, to June, 1918, 4102 enemymachines were destroyed or brought down with a loss of 1213 machines.

Besides financing her own war costs she had by October, 1917, loanedeight hundred million dollars to the Dominions and five billion fivehundred million to the Allies. She raised five billion in thirty days. Inthe first eight months of 1918 she contributed to the various forms ofwar loan at the average rate of one hundred and twenty-four million,eight hundred thousand a week.

Is that enough? Enough to show what England did in the War? No, it is notenough for such people as continue to ask what she did. Nothing wouldsuffice these persons. During the earlier stages of the War it waspossible that the question could be asked honestly--though neverintelligently--because the facts and figures were not at that time alwaysaccessible. They were still piling up, they were scattered about, mentionof them was incidental and fugitive, they could be missed by anybody whowas not diligently alert to find them. To-day it is quite otherwise. Thefacts and figures have been compiled, arranged, published in accessibleand convenient form; therefore to-day, the man or woman who persists inasking what England did in the war is not honest but dishonest ormentally spotted, and does not want to be answered. They don't want toknow. The question is merely a camouflage of their spite, and were everyitem given of the gigantic and magnificent contribution that England madeto the defeat of the Kaiser and all his works, it would not stop theirevil mouths. Not for them am I here setting forth a part of what Englanddid; it is for the convenience of the honest American, who does want toknow, that my collection of facts is made from the various sources whichhe may not have the time or the means to look up for himself. For hisbenefit I add some particulars concerning the British Navy which kept theKaiser out of our front yard.

Admiral Mahan said in his book--and he was an American of whose knowledgeand wisdom Congress seems to have known nothing and cared less--"Why doEnglish innate political conceptions of popular representativegovernment, of the balance of law and liberty, prevail in North Americafrom the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to thePacific? Because the command of the sea at the decisive era belonged toGreat Britain." We have seen that the decisive era was when Napoleon'smouth watered for Louisiana, and when England took her stand behind theMonroe Doctrine.

Admiral Sims said in the second installment of his narrative The Victoryat Sea, published in The World's Work for October, 1919, at page 619:"... Let us suppose for a moment that an earthquake, or some other greatnatural disturbance, had engulfed the British fleet at Scapa Flow. Theworld would then have been at Germany's mercy and all the destroyers theAllies could have put upon the sea would have availed them nothing, forthe German battleships and battle cruisers could have sunk them or driventhem into their ports. Then Allied commerce would have been the prey, notonly of the submarines, which could have operated with the utmostfreedom, but of the German surface craft as well. In a few weeks theBritish food supplies would have been exhausted. There would have been anearly end to the soldiers and munitions which Britain was constantlysending to France. The United States could have sent no forces to theWestern front, and the result would have been the surrender which theAllies themselves, in the spring of 1917, regarded as a not remotepossibility. America would then have been compelled to face the Germanpower alone, and to face it long before we had had an opportunity toassemble our resources and equip our armies. The world was preserved fromall these calamities because the destroyer and the convoy solved theproblem of the submarines, and because back of these agencies of victorylay Admiral Beatty's squadrons, holding at arm's length the Germansurface ships while these comparatively fragile craft were saving theliberties of the world."

Yes. The High Seas Fleet of Germany, costing her one billion five hundredmillion dollars, was bottled up. Five million five hundred thousand tonsof German shipping and one million tons of Austrian shipping were drivenoff the seas or captured; oversea trade and oversea colonies were cutoff. Two million oversea Huns of fighting age were hindered from joiningthe enemy. Ocean commerce and communication were stopped for the Huns andsecured to the Allies. In 1916, 2100 mines were swept up and 89 minesweepers lost. These mine sweepers and patrol boats numbered 12 in 1914,and 3300 by 1918. To patrol the seas British ships had to steam eightmillion miles in a single month. During the four years of the war theytransported oversea more than thirteen million men (losing but 2700through enemy action) as well as transporting two million horses andmules, five hundred thousand vehicles, twenty-five million tons ofexplosives, fifty-one million tons of oil and fuel, one hundred andthirty million tons of food and other materials for the use of theAllies. In one month three hundred and fifty-five thousand men werecarried from England to France.

It was after our present Secretary of the Navy, in his speech in Bostonto which allusion has been made, had given our navy all and the Britishnavy none of the credit of conveying our soldiers overseas, that AdmiralSims repaired the singular oblivion of the Secretary. We Americans shouldknow the truth, he said. We had not been too accurately informed. We didnot seem to have been told by anybody, for instance, that of the fivethousand anti-submarine craft operating day and night in the infestedwaters, we had 160, or 3 per cent; that of the million and a half troopswhich had gone over from here in a few months, Great Britain brought overtwo thirds and escorted half.

"I would like American papers to pay particular attention to the factthat there are about 5000 anti-submarine craft in the ocean to-day,cutting out mines, escorting troop ships, and making it possible for usto go ahead and win this war. They can do this because the British GrandFleet is so powerful that the German High Seas Fleet has to stay at home.The British Grand Fleet is the foundation stone of the cause of the wholeof the Allies."

Thus Admiral Sims.

That is part of what England did in the war.

Note.--The author expresses thanks and acknowledgment to Pearson'sMagazine for permission to use the passages quoted from the articles byAdmiral Sims.

Chapter XV: Rude Britannia, Crude Columbia

It may have been ten years ago, it may have been fifteen--and just howlong it was before the war makes no matter--that I received an invitationto join a society for the promotion of more friendly relations betweenthe United States and England.

"No, indeed," I said to myself.

Even as I read the note, hostility rose in me. Refusal sprang to my lipsbefore my reason had acted at all. I remembered George III. I rememberedthe Civil War. The ancient grudge, the anti-English complex, had beeninstantly set fermenting in me. Nothing could better disclose its lurkingpersistence than my virtually automatic exclamation, "No, indeed!" I knewsomething about England's friendly acts, about Venezuela, and Manila Bay,and Edmund Burke, and John Bright, and the Queen, and the Lancashirecotton spinners. And more than this historic knowledge, I knew livingEnglish people, men and women, among whom I counted dear and even belovedfriends. I knew also, just as well as Admiral Mahan knew, and otherAmericans by the hundreds of thousands have known and know at thismoment, that all the best we have and are--law, ethics, love of liberty--all of it came from England, grew in England first, ripened from the seedof which we are merely one great harvest, planted here by England. Andyet I instantly exclaimed, "No, indeed! "

Well, having been inflicted with the anti-English complex myself, Iunderstand it all the better in others, and am begging them to counteractit as I have done. You will recollect that I said at the outset of theseobservations that, as I saw it, our prejudice was founded upon threecauses fairly separate, although they often melted together. With two ofthese causes I have now dealt--the school histories, and certain acts andpolicies of England's throughout our relations with her. The third cause,I said, was certain traits of the English and ourselves which haveproduced personal friction. An American does or says something whichangers an Englishman, who thereupon goes about thinking and saying,"Those insufferable Yankees!" An Englishman does or says something whichangers an American, who thereupon goes about thinking and saying, "ToHell with England!" Each makes the well-nigh universal--but none theless perfectly ridiculous--blunder of damning a whole people because oneof them has rubbed him the wrong way. Nothing could show up more forciblyand vividly this human weakness for generalizing from insufficient data,than the incident in London streets which I promised to tell you in fullwhen we should reach the time for it. The time is now.

In a hospital at no great distance from San Francisco, a wounded Americansoldier said to one who sat beside him, that never would he go to Europeto fight anybody again--except the English. Them he would like to fight;and to the astonished visitor he told his reason. He, it appeared, wasone of our Americans who marched through London streets on that day whenthe eyes of London looked for the first time upon the Yankees at lastarrived to bear a hand to England and her Allies. From the mob came acertain taunt: "You silly ass."

It was, as you will observe, an unflattering interpretation of ournational initials, U. S. A. Of course it was enough to make a properAmerican doughboy entirely "hot under the collar." To this reading of ournational initials our national readiness retorted in kind at an earlydate: A. E. F. meant After England Failed. But why, months and monthsafterwards, when everything was over, did that foolish doughboy in thehospital hug this lone thing to his memory? It was the act of anunthinking few. Didn't he notice what the rest of London was doing thatday? Didn't he remember that she flew the Union Jack and the Stars andStripes together from every symbolic pinnacle of creed and governmentthat rose above her continent of streets and dwellings to the sky?Couldn't he feel that England, his old enemy and old mother, bowed andstricken and struggling, was opening her arms to him wide? She's a personwho hides her tears even from herself; but it seems to me that, with adrop of imagination and half a drop of thought, he might have discovereda year and a half after a few street roughs had insulted him, that theywere not all England. With two drops of thought it might even haveultimately struck him that here we came, late, very late, indeed, onlyjust in time, from a country untouched, unafflicted, unbombed, safe,because of England's ships, to tired, broken, bleeding England; and thatthe sight of us, so jaunty, so fresh, so innocent of suffering andbereavement, should have been for a thoughtless moment galling tounthinking brains?

I am perfectly sure that if such considerations as these were laid beforeany American soldier who still smarted under that taunt in Londonstreets, his good American sense, which is our best possession, wouldgrasp and accept the thing in its true proportions. He wouldn't want toblot an Empire out because a handful of muckers called him names. Of thisI am perfectly sure, because in Paris streets it was my happy lot fourmonths after the Armistice to talk with many American soldiers, amongwhom some felt sore about the French. Not one of these but saw with hisgood American sense, directly I pointed certain facts out to him, thathis hostile generalization had been unjust. But, to quote the oft-quotedMr. Kipling, that is another story.

An American regiment just arrived in France was encamped for purposes oftraining and experience next a British regiment come back from the frontto rest. The streets of the two camps were adjacent, and the Tommieswalked out to watch the Yankees pegging down their tents.

"Aw," they said, "wot a shyme you've brought nobody along to tuck youin."

They made other similar remarks; commented unfavorably upon thealignment; "You were a bit late in coming," they said. Of course our boyshad answers, and to these the Tommies had further answers, and thisencounter of wits very naturally led to a result which could not possiblyhave been happier. I don't know what the Tommies expected the Yankees todo. I suppose they were as ignorant of our nature as we of theirs, andthat they entertained preconceived notions. They suddenly found that wewere, once again to quote Mr. Kipling, "bachelors in barricks mostremarkable like" themselves. An American first sergeant hit a Britishfirst sergeant. Instantly a thousand men were milling. For thirty minutesthey kept at it. Warriors reeled together and fell and rose and got it inthe neck and the jaw and the eye and the nose--and all the while theBritish and American officers, splendidly discreet, saw none of it.British soldiers were carried back to their streets, still fighting, bunged Yankees staggered everywhere--but not an officer saw any of it.Black eyes the next day, and other tokens, very plainly showed who hadbeen at this party. Thereafter a much better feeling prevailed betweenTommies and Yanks.

A more peaceful contact produced excellent consequences at an encampmentof Americans in England. The Americans had brought over an idea,apparently, that the English were "easy." They tried it on in sundryways, but ended by the discovery that, while engaged upon thisenterprise, they had been in sundry ways quite completely "done"themselves. This gave them a respect for their English cousins which theyhad never felt before.

Here is another tale, similar in moral. This occurred at Brest, inFrance. In the Y hut sat an English lady, one of the hostesses. To hercame a young American marine with whom she already had some acquaintance.This led him to ask for her advice. He said to her that as his permissionwas of only seventy-two hours, he wanted to be as economical of his timeas he could and see everything best worth while for him to see during hisleave. Would she, therefore, tell him what things in Paris were the mostinteresting and in what order he had best take them? She replied withanother suggestion; why not, she said, ask for permission for England?This would give him two weeks instead of seventy-two hours. At this heburst out violently that he would not set foot in England; that he neverwanted to have anything to do with England or with the English: "Why, Iam a marine!" he exclaimed, "and we marines would sooner knock down anyEnglish sailor than speak to him."

The English lady, naturally, did not then tell him her nationality. Shenow realized that he had supposed her to be American, because she hadfrequently been in America and had talked to him as no stranger to thecountry could. She, of course, did not urge his going to England; sheadvised him what to see in France. He took his leave of seventy-two hoursand when he returned was very grateful for the advice she had given him.

She saw him often after this, and he grew to rely very much upon herfriendly counsel. Finally, when the time came for her to go away fromBrest, she told him that she was English. And then she said somethinglike this to him:

"Now, you told me you had never been in England and had never known anEnglish person in your life, and yet you had all these ideas against usbecause somebody had taught you wrong. It is not at all your fault. Youare only nineteen years old and you cannot read about us, because youhave no chance; but at least you do know one English person now, and thatEnglish person begs you, when you do have a chance to read and informyourself of the truth, to find out what England really has been, and whatshe has really done in this war."

The end of the story is that the boy, who had become devoted to her, didas she suggested. To-day she receives letters from him which show thatnothing is left of his anti-English complex. It is another instance ofhow clearly our native American mind, if only the facts are given it,thinks, judges, and concludes.

It is for those of my countrymen who will never have this chance, nevermeet some one who can guide them to the facts", that I tell these things.Let them "cut out the dope." At this very moment that I write--November24, 1919--the dope is being fed freely to all who are ready, whetherthrough ignorance or through interested motives, to swallow it. Theancient grudge is being played up strong over the whole country in theinterest of Irish independence.

Ian Hay in his two books so timely and so excellent, Getting Together andThe Oppressed English, could not be as unreserved, naturally, as I can beabout those traits in my own countrymen which have, in the past at anyrate, retarded English cordiality towards Americans. Of these I shallspeak as plainly as I know how. But also, being an American and thereforeby birth more indiscreet than Ian Hay, I shall speak as plainly as I knowhow of those traits in the English which have helped to keep warm ourancient grudge. Thus I may render both countries forever uninhabitable tome, but shall at least take with me into exile a character for strict, ifdisastrous, impartiality.

I begin with an American who was traveling in an English train. Itstopped somewhere, and out of the window he saw some buildings whichinterested him.

"Can you tell me what those are?" he asked an Englishman, a stranger, whosat in the other corner of the compartment.

"Better ask the guard," said the Englishman.

Since that brief dialogue, this American does not think well of theEnglish.

Now, two interpretations of the Englishman's answer are possible. One is,that he didn't himself know, and said so in his English way. English talkis often very short, much shorter than ours. That is because they allunderstand each other, are much closer knit than we are. Behind them aregenerations of "doing it" in the same established way, a way that theirlong experience of life has hammered out for their own convenience, andwhich they like. We're not nearly so closely knit together here, save incertain spots, especially the old spots. In Boston they understand eachother with very few words said. So they do in Charleston. But these spotsof condensed and hoarded understanding lie far apart, are neverconfluent, and also differ in their details; while the whole of Englandis confluent, and the details have been slowly worked out throughcenturies of getting on together, and are accepted and observed exactlylike the rules of a game.

In America, if the American didn't know, he would have answered, "I don'tknow. I think you'll have to ask the conductor," or at any rate, hisreply would have been longer than the Englishman's. But I am not going toaccept the idea that the Englishman didn't know and said so in his briefusual way. It's equally possible that he did know. Then, you naturallyask, why in the name of common civility did he give such an answer to theAmerican?

I believe that I can tell you. He didn't know that my friend was anAmerican, he thought he was an Englishman who had broken the rules of thegame. We do have some rules here in America, only we have not nearly somany, they're much more stretchable, and it's not all of us who havelearned them. But nevertheless a good many have.

Suppose you were traveling in a train here, and the man next you, whoseface you had never seen before, and with whom you had not yet exchanged asyllable, said: "What's your pet name for your wife?"

Wouldn't your immediate inclination be to say, "What damned business isthat of yours?" or words to that general effect?

But again, you most naturally object, there was nothing personal in myfriend's question about the buildings. No; but that is not it. At thebottom, both questions are an invasion of the same deep-seated thing--theright to privacy. In America, what with the newspaper reporters and thisand that and the other, the territory of a man's privacy has beenlessened and lessened until very little of it remains; but most of usstill do draw the line somewhere; we may not all draw it at the sameplace, but we do draw a line. The difference, then, between ourselves andthe English in this respect is simply, that with them the territory of aman's privacy covers more ground, and different ground as well. AnEnglishman doesn't expect strangers to ask him questions of a guide-booksort. For all such questions his English system provides perfectlydefinite persons to answer. If you want to know where the ticket officeis, or where to take your baggage, or what time the train goes, or whatplatform it starts from, or what towns it stops at, and what churches orother buildings of interest are to be seen in those towns, there areporters and guards and Bradshaws and guidebooks to tell you, and it'sthey whom you are expected to consult, not any fellow-traveler whohappens to be at hand. If you ask him, you break the rules. Had my friendsaid: "I am an American. Would you mind telling me what those buildingsare?" all would have gone well. The Englishman would have recognized (notfifty years ago, but certainly to-day) that it wasn't a question of rulesbetween them, and would have at once explained--either that he didn'tknow, or that the buildings were such and such.

Do not, I beg, suppose for a moment that I am holding up the English wayas better than our own--or worse. I am not making comparisons; I amtrying to show differences. Very likely there are many points wherein wethink the English might do well to borrow from us; and it is quite aslikely that the English think we might here and there take a leaf fromtheir book to our advantage. But I am not theorizing, I am not seeking toshow that we manage life better or that they manage life better; the onlymoral that I seek to draw from these anecdotes is, that we should eachunderstand and hence make allowance for the other fellow's way. You willadmit, I am sure, be you American or English, that everybody has a rightto his own way? The proverb "When in Rome you must do as Rome does"covers it, and would save trouble if we always obeyed it. The people whoforget it most are they that go to Rome for the first time; and I shallgive you both English and American examples of this presently. It is goodto ascertain before you go to Rome, if you can, what Rome does do.

Have you never been mistaken for a waiter, or something of that sort?Perhaps you will have heard the anecdote about one of our ambassadors toEngland. All ambassadors, save ours, wear on formal occasions adistinguishing uniform, just as our army and navy officers do; it isconvenient, practical, and saves trouble. But we have declared it menial,or despotic, or un-American, or something equally silly, and hence ourambassadors must wear evening dress resembling closely the attire ofthose who are handing the supper or answering the door-bell. AnEnglishman saw Mr. Choate at some diplomatic function, standing about inthis evening costume, and said:

"Call me a cab."

"You are a cab," said Mr. Choate, obediently.

Thus did he make known to the Englishman that he was not a waiter.Similarly in crowded hotel dining-rooms or crowded railroad stations haveagitated ladies clutched my arm and said:

"I want a table for three," or "When does the train go to Poughkeepsie? "

Just as we in America have regular people to attend to these things, sodo they in England; and as the English respect each other's right toprivacy very much more than we do, they resent invasions of it very muchmore than we do. But, let me say again, they are likely to mind it onlyin somebody they think knows the rules. With those who don't know them itis different. I say this with all the more certainty because of a fairlyrecent afternoon spent in an English garden with English friends. Thequestion of pronunciation came up. Now you will readily see that withthem and their compactness, their great public schools, their two greatUniversities, and their great London, the one eternal focus of them all,both the chance of diversity in social customs and the tolerance of itmust be far less than in our huge unfocused country. With us, Boston, NewYork, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, is each a centre. Here youcan pronounce the word calm, for example, in one way or another, and itmerely indicates where you come from. Departure in England from certainestablished pronunciations has another effect.

"Of course," said one of my friends, "one knows where to place anybodywho says 'girl'" (pronouncing it as it is spelled).

"That's frightful," said I, "because I say 'girl'."

"Oh, but you are an American. It doesn't apply."

But had I been English, it would have been something like coming todinner without your collar.

That is why I think that, had my friend in the train begun his questionabout the buildings by saying that he was an American, the answer wouldhave been different. Not all the English yet, but many more than therewere fifty or even twenty years ago, have ceased to apply their rules tous.

About 1874 a friend of mine from New York was taken to a London Club.Into the room where he was came the Prince of Wales, who took out acigar, felt for and found no matches, looked about, and there was asilence. My friend thereupon produced matches, struck one, and offered itto the Prince, who bowed, thanked him, lighted his cigar, and presentlywent away.

Then an Englishman observed to my friend: "It's not the thing for acommoner to offer a light to the Prince."

"I'm not a commoner, I'm an American," said my friend with perfect goodnature.

Whatever their rule may be to-day about the Prince and matches, as to usthey have come to accept my friend's pertinent distinction: they don'texpect us to keep or even to know their own set of rules.

Indeed, they surpass us in this, they make more allowances for us than wefor them. They don't criticize Americans for not being English. Americansstill constantly do criticize the English for not being Americans. Now,the measure in which you don't allow for the customs of another countryis the measure of your own provincialism. I have heard some of our ownsoldiers express dislike of the English because of their coldness. TheEnglish are not cold; they are silent upon certain matters. But it is allthere. Do you remember that sailor at Zeebrugge carrying the unconsciousbody of a comrade to safety, not sure yet if he were alive or dead, andstroking that comrade's head as he went, saying over and over, "Did youthink I would leave yer?" We are more demonstrative, we spell things outwhich it is the way of the English to leave between the lines. But it isall there! Behind that unconciliating wall of shyness and reserve, beatsand hides the warm, loyal British heart, the most constant heart in theworld.

"It isn't done."

That phrase applies to many things in England besides offering a light tothe Prince, or asking a fellow traveler what those buildings are; and Ithink that the Englishman's notion of his right to privacy lies at thebottom of quite a number of these things. You may lay some of them tosnobbishness, to caste, to shyness, they may have various secondaryorigins; but I prefer to cover them all with the broader term, the rightto privacy, because it seems philosophically to account for them andexplain them.

In May, 1915, an Oxford professor was in New York. A few years beforethis I had read a book of his which had delighted me. I met him at lunch,I had not known him before. Even as we shook hands, I blurted out to himmy admiration for his book.

"Oh."

That was the whole of his reply. It made me laugh at myself, for I shouldhave known better. I had often been in England and could have toldanybody that you mustn't too abruptly or obviously refer to what theother fellow does, still less to what you do yourself. "It isn't done."It's a sort of indecent exposure. It's one of the invasions of the rightto privacy.

In America, not everywhere but in many places, a man upon entering a cluband seeing a friend across the room, will not hesitate to call out tohim, "Hullo, Jack!" or "Hullo, George!" or whatever. In England "itisn't done." The greeting would be conveyed by a short nod or a glance.To call out a man's name across a room full of people, some of whom maybe total strangers, invades his privacy and theirs. Have you noticed how,in our Pullman parlor cars, a party sitting together, generally youngwomen, will shriek their conversation in a voice that bores like a gimletthrough the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. In England "itisn't done." We shouldn't stand it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we dostand it. It is a good instance to show that the Englishman's right toprivacy is larger than ours, and thus that his liberty is larger thanours.

Before leaving this point, which to my thinking is the cause of manyfrictions and misunderstandings between ourselves and the English, Imustn't omit to give instances of divergence, where an Englishman willspeak of matters upon which we are silent, and is silent upon subjects ofwhich we will speak.

You may present a letter of introduction to an Englishman, and he wishesto be civil, to help you to have a good time. It is quite possible he maysay something like this:

"I think you had better know my sister Sophy. You mayn't like her. Buther dinners are rather amusing. Of course the food's ghastly becauseshe's the stingiest woman in London."

On the other hand, many Americans (though less willing than the French)are willing to discuss creed, immortality, faith. There is nothing fromwhich the Englishman more peremptorily recoils, although he hates wellnigh as deeply all abstract discussion, or to be clever, or to have yoube clever. An American friend of mine had grown tired of an Englishmanwho had been finding fault with one American thing after another. So hesuddenly said:

"Will you tell me why you English when you enter your pews on Sundayalways immediately smell your hats? "

To be ponderous over this anecdote grieves me--but you may not know thatorthodox Englishmen usually don't kneel, as we do, after reaching theirpews; they stand for a moment, covering their faces with theirwell-brushed hats: with each nation the observance is the same, it is inthe manner of the observing that we differ.

Much is said about our "common language," and its being a reason for ourunderstanding each other. Yes; but it is also almost as much a cause forour misunderstanding each other. It is both a help and a trap. If weAmericans spoke something so wholly different from English as French is,comparisons couldn't be made; and somebody has remarked that comparisonsare odious.

"Why do you call your luggage baggage?" says the Englishman--or used tosay.

"Why do you call your baggage luggage?" says the American--or used tosay.

"Why don't you say treacle?" inquires the Englishman.

"Because we call it molasses," answers the American.

"How absurd to speak of a car when you mean a carriage!" exclaims theEnglishman.

"We don't mean a carriage, we mean a car," retorts the American.

You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps even held) foolishconversations like that; and you will readily perceive that if we didn'tsay "car" when we spoke of the vehicle you get into when you board atrain, but called it a voiture, or something else quite "foreign," theEnglishman would not feel that we had taken a sort of liberty with hismother-tongue. A deep point lies here: for most English the world isdivided into three peoples, English, foreigners, and Americans; and formost of us likewise it is divided into Americans, foreigners, and Eng-lish. Now a "foreigner" can call molasses whatever he pleases; we do notfeel that he has taken any liberty with our mother-tongue; his tongue hasa different mother; he can't help that; he's not to be criticized forthat. But we and the English speak a tongue that has the same mother.This identity in pedigree has led and still leads to countless familydiscords. I've not a doubt that divergences in vocabulary and in accentwere the fount and origin of some swollen noses, some battered eyes, whenour Yankees mixed with the Tommies. Each would be certain to think thatthe other couldn't "talk straight"--and each would be certain to say so.I shall not here spin out a list of different names for the same thingsnow current in English and American usage: molasses and treacle willsuffice for an example; you will be able easily to think of others, andthere are many such that occur in everyday speech. Almost more tricky arethose words which both peoples use alike, but with different meanings. Ishall spin no list of these either; one example there is which I cannotname, of two words constantly used in both countries, each word quiteproper in one country, while in the other it is more than improper.Thirty years ago I explained this one evening to a young Englishman whowas here for a while. Two or three days later, he thanked me ferventlyfor the warning: it had saved him, during a game of tennis, from afrightful shock, when his partner, a charming girl, meaning to tell himto cheer up, had used the word that is so harmless with us and in Englandso far beyond the pale of polite society.

Quite as much as words, accent also leads to dissension. I have heardmany an American speak of the English accent as "affected"; and ouraccent displeases the English. Now what Englishman, or what American,ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?His tongue has a different mother!

I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences shouldhave come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matter offact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents literateand illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its notion of theother's way of speaking--we're known by our shrill nasal twang, they bytheir broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is it that not allAmericans and not all English do in their enunciation conform to thesetypes.

One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautifulcathedral and its serene and gracious close. "Star-scattered on thegrass," and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitaryor in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at the innI was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishman inevening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, and hereturned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I was stoppingexpressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to find ascene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about, helooked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that Iexplained to him my nationality.

"I shouldn't have known it," he remarked, after an instant's pause.

I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly, Ithink, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same oldmother-tongue!

"You mean," I said, "that I haven't happened to say 'I guess,' and that Idon't, perhaps, talk through my nose? But we don't all do that. We do allsorts of things."

He stuck to it. "You talk like us."

"Well, I'm sure I don't mean to talk like anybody!" I sighed.

This diverted him, and brought us closer.

"And see here," I continued, "I knew you were English, although you'venot dropped a single h."

"Oh, but," he said, "dropping h's--that's--that's not--"

"I know it isn't," I said. "Neither is talking through your nose. And wedon't all say 'Amurrican.'"

But he stuck to it. "All the same there is an American voice. Thetrain yesterday was full of it. Officers. Unmistakable." And he shook hishead.

After this we got on better than ever; and as he went his way, he gave mesome advice about the hotel. I should do well to avoid the reading room.The hotel went in rather too much for being old-fashioned. Ran it intothe ground. Tiresome. Good-night.

Presently I shall disclose more plainly to you the moral of my Salisburyanecdote.

Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes the lips of the Frenchwhen they visit our shores? Not from the French do you hear promptaspersions as to our differences from them. They observe that proverbabout being in Rome: they may not be able to do as Rome does, but they donot inquire why Rome isn't like Paris. If you ask them how they like ourhotels or our trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer their own,but they will hardly volunteer this opinion. But the American in Englandand the Englishman in America go about volunteering opinions. Are theFrench more discreet? I believe that they are; but I wonder if there isnot also something else at the bottom of it. You and I will say thingsabout our cousins to our aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsiders to saythose things. Is it this, the-members-of-the-family principle, whichmakes us less discreet than the French? Is it this, too, which leads usby a seeming paradox to resent criticism more when it comes from England?I know not how it may be with you; but with me, when I pick up the paperand read that the Germans are calling us pig-dogs again, I am merelyamused. When I read French or Italian abuse of us, I am sorry, to besure; but when some English paper jumps on us, I hate it, even when Iknow that what it says isn't true. So here, if I am right in mymembers-of-the-family hypothesis, you have the English and ourselvesfeeling free to be disagreeable to each other because we are relations,and yet feeling especially resentful because it's a relation who is beingdisagreeable. I merely put the point to you, I lay no dogma downconcerning members of the family; but I am perfectly sure thatdiscretion is a quality more common to the French than to ourselves orour relations: I mean something a little more than discretion, I meanesprit de conduits, for which it is hard to find a translation.

Upon my first two points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, Ihave lingered long, feeling these to be not only of prime importance andwide application, but also to be quite beyond my power to make lucid inshort compass. I trust that they have been made lucid. I must now get onto further anecdotes, illustrating other and less subtle causes ofmisunderstanding; and I feel somewhat like the author of Don Juan when heexclaims that he almost wishes he had ne'er begun that very remarkablepoem. I renounce all pretense to the French virtue of discretion.

Evening dress has been the source of many irritations. Englishmen did notappear to think that they need wear it at American dinner parties. Therewas a good deal of this at one time. During that period an Englishman,who had brought letters to a gentleman in Boston and in consequence hadbeen asked to dinner, entered the house of his host in a tweed suit. Hishost, in evening dress of course, met him in the hall.

"Oh, I see," said the Bostonian, "that you haven't your dress suit withyou. The man will take you upstairs and one of mine will fit you wellenough. We'll wait."

In England, a cricketer from Philadelphia, after the match at Lord's, hadbeen invited to dine at a great house with the rest of his eleven. Theywere to go there on a coach. The American discovered after arrival thathe alone of the eleven had not brought a dress suit with him. He askedhis host what he was to do.

"I advise you to go home," said the host.

The moral here is not that all hosts in England would have treated aguest so, or that all American hosts would have met the situation so wellas that Boston gentleman: but too many English used to be sociallybrutal--quite as much so to each other as to us, or any one. One shouldbear that in mind. I know of nothing more English in its way than whatEton answered to Beaumont (I think) when Beaumont sent a challenge toplay cricket: "Harrow we know, and Rugby we have heard of. But who areyou?"

That sort of thing belongs rather to the Palmerston days than to these;belongs to days that were nearer in spirit to the Waterloo of 1815, whicha haughty England won, than to the Waterloo of 1914-18, which a humblerEngland so nearly lost.

Turn we next the other way for a look at ourselves. An American lady whohad brought a letter of introduction to an Englishman in London was inconsequence asked to lunch. He naturally and hospitably gathered to meether various distinguished guests. Afterwards she wrote him that shewished him to invite her to lunch again, as she had matters of importanceto tell him. Why, then, didn't she ask him to lunch with her? Can yousee? I think I do.

An American lady was at a house party in Scotland at which she met agentleman of old and famous Scotch blood. He was wearing the kilt of hisclan. While she talked with him she stared, and finally burst outlaughing. "I declare," she said, "that's positively the most ridiculousthing I ever saw a man dressed in."

At the Savoy hotel in August, 1914, when England declared war uponGermany, many American women made scenes of confusion and vociferation.About England and the blast of Fate which had struck her they had nothingto say, but crowded and wailed of their own discomforts, meals, rooms,every paltry personal inconvenience to which they were subjected, orfeared that they were going to be subjected. Under the unprecedentedstress this was, perhaps, not unnatural; but it would have seemed lessdispleasing had they also occasionally showed concern for England'splight and peril.

An American, this time a man (our crudities are not limited to the sex)stood up in a theatre, disputing the sixpence which you always have topay for your program in the London theatres. He disputed so long thatmany people had to stand waiting to be shown their seats.

During deals at a game of bridge on a Cunard steamer, the talk had turnedupon a certain historic house in an English county. The talk wasfriendly, everything had been friendly each day.

"Well," said a very rich American to his English partner in the game,"those big estates will all be ours pretty soon. We're going to buy themup and turn your island into our summer resort." No doubt thismillionaire intended to be playfully humorous.

At a table where several British and one American--an officer--sat duringanother ocean voyage between Liverpool and Halifax in June, 1919, theofficer expressed satisfaction to be getting home again. He had goneover, he said, to "clean up the mess the British had made."

To a company of Americans who had never heard it before, was told thewell-known exploit of an American girl in Europe. In an ancient churchshe was shown the tomb of a soldier who had been killed in battle threecenturies ago. In his honor and memory, because he lost his life bravelyin a great cause, his family had kept a little glimmering lamp alightever since. It hung there, beside the tomb.

"And that's never gone out in all this time?" asked the American girl.

"Never," she was told.

"Well, it's out now, anyway," and she blew it out.

All the Americans who heard this were shocked all but one, who said:

"Well, I think she was right."

There you are! There you have us at our very worst! And with this plumpspecimen of the American in Europe at his very worst, I turn back to theEnglish: only, pray do not fail to give those other Americans who wereshocked by the outrage of the lamp their due. How wide of the mark wouldyou be if you judged us all by the one who approved of that horriblevandal girl's act! It cannot be too often repeated that we must nevercondemn a whole people for what some of the people do.

In the two-and-a-half anecdotes which follow, you must watch out forsomething which lies beneath their very obvious surface.

An American sat at lunch with a great English lady in her country-house.Although she had seen him but once before, she began a conversation likethis:

Did the American know the van Squibbers?

He did not.

Well, the van Squibbers, his hostess explained, were Americans who livedin London and went everywhere. One certainly did see them everywhere.They were almost too extraordinary.

Now the American knew quite all about these van Squibbers. He knew alsothat in New York, and Boston, and Philadelphia, and in many other placeswhere existed a society with still some ragged remnants of decency anddecorum left, one would not meet this highly star-spangled family"everywhere."

The hostess kept it up. Did the American know the Butteredbuns? No? Well,one met the Butteredbuns everywhere too. They were rather moreextraordinary than the van Squibbers. And then there were the Cakewalks,and the Smith-Trapezes' Mrs. Smith-Trapeze wasn't as extraordinary as herdaughter--the one that put the live frog in Lord Meldon's soup--and ofcourse neither of them were "talked about" in the same way that theeldest Cakewalk girl was talked about. Everybody went to them, of course,because one really never knew what one might miss if one didn't go.At length the American said:

"You must correct me if I am wrong in an impression I have received.Vulgar Americans seem to me to get on very well in London."

The hostess paused for a moment, and then she said:

"That is perfectly true."

This acknowledgment was complete, and perfectly friendly, and after thatall went better than it had gone before.

The half anecdote is a part of this one, and happened a few weeks laterat table--dinner this time.

Sitting next to the same American was an English lady whose conversationled him to repeat to her what he had said to his hostess at lunch:"Vulgar Americans seem to get on very well in London society."

"They do," said the lady, "and I will tell you why. We English--I meanthat set of English--are blase. We see each other too much, we are allalike in our ways, and we are awfully tired of it. Therefore it refreshesus and amuses us to see something new and different."

"Then," said the American, "you accept these hideous people'sinvitations, and go to their houses, and eat their food, and drink theirchampagne, and it's just like going to see the monkeys at the Zoo?"

"It is," returned the lady.

"But," the American asked, "isn't that awfully low down of you?" (Hesmiled as he said it.)

Immediately the English lady assented; and grew more cordial. When nextday the party came to break up, she contrived in the manner of herfarewell to make the American understand that because of theirconversation she bore him not ill will but good will.

Once more, the scene of my anecdote is at table, a long table in a club,where men came to lunch. All were Englishmen, except a single stranger.He was an American, who through the kindness of one beloved member ofthat club, no longer living now, had received a card to the club. TheAmerican, upon sitting down alone in this company, felt what I supposethat many of us feel in like circumstances: he wished there were somebodythere who knew him and could nod to him. Nevertheless, he was spoken to,asked questions about various of his fellow countrymen, and made at home.Presently, however, an elderly member who had been silent and whom I willdesignate as being of the Dr. Samuel Johnson type, said: "You seem to behaving trouble in your packing houses over in America? "

We were.

"Very disgraceful, those exposures."

They were. It was May, 1906.

"Your Government seems to be doing something about it. It's certainlyscandalous. Such abuses should never have been possible in the firstplace. It oughtn't to require your Government to stop it. It shouldn'thave started."

"I fancy the facts aren't quite so bad as that sensational novel aboutChicago makes them out," said the American. "At least I have been toldso."

"It all sounds characteristic to me," said the Sam Johnson. "It's quitethe sort of thing one expects to hear from the States."

"It is characteristic," said the American. "In spite of all the yearsthat the sea has separated us, we're still inveterately like you, abullying, dishonest lot--though we've had nothing quite so bad yet asyour opium trade with China."

The Sam Johnson said no more.

At a ranch in Wyoming were a number of Americans and one Englishman, aman of note, bearing a celebrated name. He was telling the company whatone could do in the way of amusement in the evening in London.

"And if there's nothing at the theatres and everything else fails, youcan always go to one of the restaurants and hear the Americans eat."

There you have them, my anecdotes. They are chosen from many. I hope andbelieve that, between them all, they cover the ground; that, takentogether as I want you to take them after you have taken them singly,they make my several points clear. As I see it, they reveal the chiefwhys and wherefores of friction between English and Americans. It is alsomy hope that I have been equally disagreeable to everybody. If I am to bebanished from both countries, I shall try not to pass my exile inSwitzerland, which is indeed a lovely place, but just now too full ofcelebrated Germans.

Beyond my two early points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue,what are the generalizations to be drawn from my data? I should like tododge spelling them out, I should immensely prefer to leave it here. Somereaders know it already, knew it before I began; while for others, whathas been said will be enough. These, if they have the will to friendshipinstead of the will to hate, will get rid of their anti-English complex,supposing that they had one, and understand better in future what has notbeen clear to them before. But I seem to feel that some readers there maybe who will wish me to be more explicit.

First, then. England has a thousand years of greatness to her credit. Whowould not be proud of that? Arrogance is the seamy side of pride. That iswhat has rubbed us Americans the wrong way. We are recent. Our thousandyears of greatness are to come. Such is our passionate belief. Crudity isthe seamy side of youth. Our crudity rubs the English the wrong way.Compare the American who said we were going to buy England for a summerresort with the Englishman who said that when all other entertainment inLondon failed, you could always listen to the Americans eat. Crudity,"freshness" on our side, arrogance, toploftiness on theirs: such is onegeneralization I would have you disengage from my anecdotes.

Second. The English are blunter than we. They talk to us as they wouldtalk to themselves. The way we take it reveals that we are too oftenthin-skinned. Recent people are apt to be thin-skinned and self-consciousand self-assertive, while those with a thousand years of tradition wouldhave thicker hides and would never feel it necessary to assertthemselves. Give an Englishman as good as he gives you, and you arecertain to win his respect, and probably his regard. In this connectionsee my anecdote about the Tommies and Yankees who physically fought itout, and compare it with the Salisbury, the van Squibber, and the opiumtrade anecdotes. "Treat 'em rough," when they treat you rough: they likeit. Only, be sure you do it in the right way.

Third. We differ because we are alike. That American who stood in thetheatre complaining about the sixpence he didn't have to pay at home isexactly like Englishmen I have seen complaining about the unexpectedhere. We share not only the same mother-tongue, we share every otherfundamental thing upon which our welfare rests and our lives are carriedon. We like the same things, we hate the same things. We have the samenotions about justice, law, conduct; about what a man should be, aboutwhat a woman should be. It is like the mother-tongue we share, yet speakwith a difference. Take the mother-tongue for a parable and symbol of allthe rest. Just as the word "girl" is identical to our sight but not toour hearing, and means oh! quite the same thing throughout us all in allits meanings, so that identity of nature which we share comes often tothe surface in different guise. Our loquacity estranges the Englishman,his silence estranges us. Behind that silence beats the English heart,warm, constant, and true; none other like it on earth, except our own atits best, beating behind our loquacity.

Thus far my anecdotes carry me. May they help some reader to a betterunderstanding of what he has misunderstood heretofore!

No anecdotes that I can find (though I am sure that they are to be found)will illustrate one difference between the two peoples, very noticeableto-day. It is increasing. An Englishman not only sticks closer than abrother to his own rights, he respects the rights of his neighbor just asstrictly. We Americans are losing our grip on this. It is the bottom ofthe whole thing. It is the moral keystone of democracy. Howsoever we maytalk about our own rights to-day, we pay less and less respect to thoseof our neighbors. The result is that to-day there is more liberty inEngland than here. Liberty consists and depends upon respecting yourneighbor's rights every bit as fairly and squarely as your own.

On the other hand, I wonder if the English are as good losers as we are?Hardly anything that they could do would rub us more the wrong way thanto deny to us that fair play in sport which they accord each other. Ishall not more than mention the match between our Benicia Boy and theirTom Sayers. Of this the English version is as defective as ourschool-book account of the Revolution. I shall also pass over variousother international events that are somewhat well known, and I willillustrate the point with an anecdote known to but a few.

Crossing the ocean were some young English and Americans, who got up aninternational tug-of-war. A friend of mine was anchor of our team. Wehappened to win. They didn't take it very well. One of them said to theanchor:

"Do you know why you pulled us over the line? "

"No."

"Because you had all the blackguards on your side of the line."

"Do you know why we had all the blackguards on our side of the line? "inquired the American.

"No."

"Because we pulled you over the line."

In one of my anecdotes I used the term Sam Johnson to describe anEnglishman of a certain type. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a very markedspecimen of the type, and almost the only illustrious Englishman ofletters during our Revolutionary troubles who was not our friend. Rightdown through the years ever since, there have been Sam Johnsons writingand saying unfavorable things about us. The Tory must be eternal, as muchas the Whig or Liberal; and both are always needed. There will probablyalways be Sam Johnsons in England, just like the one who was scandalizedby our Chicago packing-house disclosures. No longer ago than June 1,1919, a Sam Johnson, who was discussing the Peace Treaty, said in myhearing, in London:

"The Yankees shouldn't have been brought into any consultation. Theyaided and abetted Germany."

In Littell's Living Age of July 20, 1918, pages 151-160, you may read aninteresting account of British writers on the United States. The bygoneones were pretty preposterous. They satirized the newness of a newcountry. It was like visiting the Esquimaux and complaining that theygrew no pineapples and wore skins. In Littell you will find how few arethe recent Sam Johnsons as compared with the recent friendly writers. Youwill also be reminded that our anti-English complex was discernedgenerations ago by Washington Irving. He said in his Sketch Book thatwriters in this country were "instilling anger and resentment into thebosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth and to strengthenwith its strength."

And he quotes from the English Quarterly Review, which in that early dayalready wrote of America and England:

"There is a sacred bond between us by blood and by language which nocircumstances can break.... Nations are too ready to admit that they havenatural enemies; why should they be less willing to believe that theyhave natural friends?"

It is we ourselves to-day, not England, that are pushing friendship away.It is our politicians, papers, and propagandists who are making thetrouble and the noise. In England the will to friendship rules, has ruledfor a long while. Does the will to hate rule with us? Do we preferGermany? Do we prefer the independence of Ireland to the peace of theworld?

Chapter XVI: An International Imposture

A part of the Irish is asking our voice and our gold to help independencefor the whole of the Irish. Independence is not desired by the whole ofthe Irish. Irishmen of Ulster have plainly said so. Everybody knows this.Roman Catholics themselves are not unanimous. Only some of them desireindependence. These, known as Sinn Fein, appeal to us for deliverancefrom their conqueror and oppressor; they dwell upon the oppression ofEngland beneath which Ireland is now crushed. They refer to England'sbrutal and unjustifiable conquest of the Irish nation seven hundred andforty-eight years ago.

What is the truth, what are the facts?

By his bull "Laudabiliter," in 1155, Pope Adrian the Fourth invited theKing of England to take charge of Ireland. In 1172 Pope Alexander theThird confirmed this by several letters, at present preserved in theBlack Book of the Exchequer. Accordingly, Henry the Second went toIreland. All the archbishops and bishops of Ireland met him at Waterford,received him as king and lord of Ireland, vowing loyal obedience to himand his successors, and acknowledging fealty to them forever. Theseprelates were followed by the kings of Cork, Limerick, Ossory, Meath, andby Reginald of Waterford. Roderick O'Connor, King of Connaught, joinedthem in 1175. All these accepted Henry the Second of England as theirLord and King, swearing to be loyal to him and his successors forever.

Such was England's brutal and unjustifiable conquest of Ireland.

Ireland was not a nation, it was a tribal chaos. The Irish nation of thatday is a legend, a myth, built by poetic imagination. During the cen-turies succeeding Henry the Second, were many eras of violence andbloodshed. In reading the story, it is hard to say which side committedthe most crimes. During those same centuries, violence and bloodshed andoppression existed everywhere in Europe. Undoubtedly England was veryoppressive to Ireland at times; but since the days of Gladstone she hassteadily endeavored to relieve Ireland, with the result that today she isoppressing Ireland rather less than our Federal Government is oppressingMassachusetts, or South Carolina, or any State. By the Wyndham Land Actof 1903, Ireland was placed in a position so advantageous, so utterly thereverse of oppression, that Dillon, the present leader, hastened to ob-struct the operation of the Act, lest the Irish genius for grievancemight perish from starvation. Examine the state of things for yourself, Icannot swell this book with the details; they are as accessible to you asthe few facts about the conquest which I have just narrated. Examine thefacts, but even without examining them, ask yourself this question: WithCanada, Australia, and all those other colonies that I have named above,satisfied with England's rule, hastening to her assistance, and with onlyIreland selling herself to Germany, is it not just possible thatsomething is the matter with Ireland rather than with England? Sinn Feinwill hear of no Home Rule. Sinn Fein demands independence. IndependenceSinn Fein will not get. Not only because of the outrage to unconsentingUlster, but also because Britain, having just got rid of one Heligolandto the East, will not permit another to start up on the West. As early asAugust 25th, 1914, mention in German papers was made of the presence inBerlin of Casement and of his mission to invite Germany to step intoIreland when England was fighting Germany. The traffic went steadily onfrom that time, and broke out in the revolution and the crimes in Dublinin 1916. England discovered the plan of the revolution just in time tofoil the landing in Ireland of Germany, whom Ireland had invited there.Were England seeking to break loose from Ireland, she could sue Irelandfor a divorce and name the Kaiser as co-respondent. Any court would grantit.

The part of Ireland which does not desire independence, which desires itso little that it was ready to resist Home Rule by force in 1914, is thesteady, thrifty, clean, coherent, prosperous part of Ireland. It is theother, the unstable part of Ireland, which has declared Ireland to be aRepublic. For convenience I will designate this part as Green Ireland,and the thrifty, stable part as Orange Ireland. So when our politicianssympathize with an "Irish" Republic, they befriend merely GreenIreland; they offend Orange Ireland.

Americans are being told in these days that they owe a debt of support toIrish independence, because the "Irish" fought with us in our ownstruggle for Independence. Yes, the Irish did, and we do owe them a debtof support. But it was the Orange Irish who fought in our Revolution, notthe Green Irish. Therefore in paying the debt to the Green Irish andclamoring for "Irish" independence, we are double crossing the OrangeIrish.

"It is a curious fact that in the Revolutionary War the Germans andCatholic Irish should have furnished the bulk of the auxiliaries to theregular English soldiers;... The fiercest and most ardent Americans ofall, however, were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and theirdescendants." History of New York, p. 133, by Theodore Roosevelt.